@-h, I happen to agree with almost everything you wrote. Where I beg to differ is in the "striving for exotic systems". I believe we should strive, but not because it raises the price. Some people have the disposable income to indulge their desires to own exotic systems. Their investment pays for the R&D that eventually filters down to "affordable" systems.

@-h, I happen to agree with almost everything you wrote. Where I beg to differ is in the "striving for exotic systems". I believe we should strive, but not because it raises the price. Some people have the disposable income to indulge their desires to own exotic systems. Their investment pays for the R&D that eventually filters down to "affordable" systems.

I dont believe that the world needs much more R&D on regular, high-bandwidth 2-ch playback. I don't believe that most such products contribute by a lot of "R", some seems to be pretty light on "D" as well.

I'd like to see more attention on the capture and rendering of spatially realistic audio and reference playback behaviour (absolute loudness, frequency response etc).